EVANSVILLE - Noel Clemmer has been driving street rods to Evansville's Frog Follies every year since 1993, but the Lake Lynn, Pa., resident has seen the celebrity frog race from which the three-day car festival takes its name only once.

"We went to the frog race about 10 years ago," he said. "It's kind of seeing like a tractor pull — once is enough."

The 69-year-old retired mechanic has never tired, however, of perusing the parade of pre-1949 street rods the Frog Follies brings every year to the Vanderburgh County 4-H Center.

This year, Clemmer parked his vehicles — a 1930 Ford coupe street rod strapped to the ramped bed of a truck he built with the body 1947 Ford cab and the frame and engine of a 1994 Ford ambulance — along the northern perimeter of the fairgrounds.

He, his wife, Judy, and their friends Parke and Grace Johnson pitched their awning and set up their collapsible chairs there, facing Boonville-New Harmony Road.

They got there at 6 a.m. Friday, early enough to find a spot farther into the center, perhaps under some trees, "but we didn't come here to see trees," he said. "We came to see cars. From here we get to see 'em go in and we get to see 'em go out."

Plenty of people stop by to see Clemmer's cars, too. If he had a quarter for every time someone has stopped to photograph his vehicles, "I could take you and all your family to dinner for a long time," he said.

The red-and-white 1939 Ford coupe, a classic street rod assembled from parts taken from a half-dozen cars made from 1937 to 1950, has personal meaning for Clemmer. "My father was going to take us boys racing," he said, his voice softening, "but he was killed in 1957, so this car is a tribute to him.

The "M3B" painted in orange-yellow letters on the car's red doors stands for "Mom's three boys," he said, his voice breaking. "That is a tribute to my mother."

And the truck is a concession to his wife, Clemmer said. "She wanted a pickup with writing on it … so I built the truck to haul the coupe. Now she's happy, and I'm happy."

Clemmer travels to about eight car festivals every year, he figures. "We like to go to the faraway ones because we like to drive the cars."

The Frog Follies ranks at or near the top of all of the car festivals he's attended. "It's right up there," said. "It's all pre-1949. That's hot rod."

Parke Johnson, an engineer from Morgantown, W.Va., agreed.

Johnson, who drove his gleaming silver 1932 Ford roadster street rod to the Frog Follies, had never been to the event before, he said, "but this is high on my list."

At events that permit newer cars, Mustangs and Camaros muscle out the competition "and the old classics get lost," he explained.